A transit police officer on patrol in Washington, D.C.’s Metro.
Photographer: CHRIS GREENBERGPublic Transit Faces Its Own Police Reckoning
Activists and transportation planners are calling on U.S. transit agencies to rethink their reliance on law enforcement and fund better service instead.
In March 1970, Whitney M. Young Jr., the executive director of the National Urban League, addressed a committee of U.S. Congress members reviewing the nation’s urban transportation needs. Federal funding for public transit must vastly expand, Young argued, for public transit was a matter of “human rights and civil rights.”
“Poor people have to get to work,” he said. “They have to look for jobs. They have to go downtown for welfare, for health. They have to shop, and a burden is thrown upon them that we think is unbearable” — that is, a lack of transportation.